Vice President Kamala Harris recently appeared on “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” where she made a number of offensive comparisons regarding the pro-life movement. Not to be outdone, MSNBC host Joy Reid made similar claims on her own show as well.
Joy Reid calls Missouri a “slave state”
On her MSNBC show, Joy Reid interviewed former senator Claire McCaskill, an ardent abortion supporter. Reid described Missouri as a “slave state” for women.
“Let me tell you how crazy it’s gotten in Missouri,” McCaskill, now an MSNBC analyst, told Reid. “Abortions — all abortions are illegal. There’s no exception for rape or incest. Conception happens — life begins at conception, it’s a personhood state. Okay? So, no abortions are being performed at Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood got money as a Medicaid provider to do what – provide contraception.”
Reid responded by arguing that women are essentially enslaved in Missouri.
“You’ve left off, Claire, that in your state it’s illegal for a pregnant woman to get an abortion, so they’ve also gone after no-fault divorce,” she said. “If you’re pregnant and you’re in a marriage with an abusive spouse, you can’t even get a divorce once you get pregnant. You become the property of both your husband and the state. They have joint ownership of you in the state of Missouri. That is a slave state as far as I’m concerned.”
If this sounds ridiculous, that’s because it is.
Missouri law does ask for pregnancy status during no-fault divorce filings, and also asks for information such as date of separation, social security numbers, and preferred custody agreements. However, nothing whatsoever is said about a woman being unable to obtain a divorce because she is pregnant; presumably, the pregnancy question is asked so that courts can be prepared to modify custody arrangements once the woman has given birth.
Missouri law also does not say anything about women being property of their husbands or the state, but that didn’t stop Reid from engaging in vicious hyperbole. And McCaskill — a former senator, who seemingly would know better — merely nodded along and said nothing.
This kind of rhetoric is nothing new for Reid. She’s also compared the pro-life movement to the Taliban, and pro-lifers to slave traders. It’s a despicable comparison, considering slave traders and terrorists regularly dehumanize others, and kill people whenever they like. It’s the pro-life movement that recognizes the inherent humanity of all people, from conception to natural death, and fights for their inherent right to life.
Did Kamala Harris liken pro-lifers to child molesters?
Kimmel began by asking if Harris supported “reproductive rights” — a ludicrous question, considering how vocally and ardently pro-abortion Harris is, and how she launched a “Reproductive Freedoms” tour on college campuses across the country. Promoting abortion appears to have become the entirety of her role as vice president. Kimmel then followed up with a leading question, asking Harris if she ever imagined she would see Roe v. Wade overturned in her lifetime. Harris, of course, answered no.
“People know I started my career as a prosecutor,” she said. “You may not know why.” She then appeared to insinuate that protecting innocent preborn human beings further violates the bodies of sexual abuse survivors.
“One of the reasons is my best friend in high school, I learned was being molested by her stepfather. So, she came to live with us. And I decided at a young age, I wanted to do the work of fighting to protect women and children from harm. And the idea that these laws would make no exception even for a survivor of a violation to their body? And to tell that woman, that person, you don’t have a right to make a decision about what happens to your body next? It’s immoral.”
Calling pro-lifers immoral is nothing new for Harris, though the apparent likening to child molesters is.
As Stephanie Reynolds, who was conceived in rape, explained in Live Action’s “Pro-Life Replies,” abortion is not a solution to rape. “Abortion does not erase the rape or undo the violence that the woman has suffered,” she said. “As many rape survivors have poignantly testified, abortion is actually an obstacle to healing after rape. Abortion adds trauma to trauma, and it creates yet another innocent victim.”
Kamala Harris insinuates Roe‘s reversal violates civil rights like Dred Scott did
Kimmel also asked Harris if there is a fundamental flaw in the governmental structure of our country if the Supreme Court can make a decision that Americans oppose, like overturning Roe. “Well we, in our history, we know, I mean look at the Dred Scott decision,” Harris responded. “This is not the first time that we know the Court can make decisions that violate the civil rights of the people.”
However, in the 1857 Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court upheld slavery. While Republicans at the time — most notably Abraham Lincoln — ardently condemned the decision, states in which slavery was practiced and protected cheered it.
Today, in 2024, it is unthinkable that one could argue that a person could be someone’s property (except, of course, when it comes to abortion, and society simply pretends the child in the womb is not really a human being), but a significantly large number of people supported slavery at that time in history. They justified it through the twisting of Scripture, they argued in favor of it economically, and it was deeply rooted in many Americans’ way of life and livelihoods.
Arguing that the Supreme Court should merely bow to the will of the people is foolish; if something violates human rights and dignity, as in the cases of slavery or abortion, then it is morally wrong, even if great numbers of people support it.
Legal slavery in the United States was dehumanizing, and the fate of enslaved people was entirely in the hands of their so-called owners. Families were often broken apart, with children stolen from their mothers and sold. Slaves were even forced to procreate with one another to create future generations of slaves. Black Americans were treated as subhuman with meaningless lives, with less value than white Americans. Whether they were bought, sold, beaten, raped, or murdered didn’t matter, because they weren’t seen as human.
Those same parallels exist with regard to abortion today. Preborn children are denied their humanity, and the value of their lives is completely dependent upon the feelings of their mothers. Because they are viewed as less than human, they can be bought, sold, traded, killed, and experimented on — and it’s seen as acceptable, even moral (as Harris demonstrated).
Right and wrong, human and alive — these are not subjective terms. There will always be people who advocate for horrific things, and in this instance, Harris and Reid are demonstrating the levels to which some will stoop in order to keep the status quo in place.
